5. There are more effective ways to learn more about us
As journalist Jean-François Cliche summarized in 2021, application makers and developers have the technological capacity to listen to us. But that’s not necessary: they know much more about us than we imagine.
Every search we make on the Internet, every page consulted, every video watched on YouTube or TikTok, all geolocation data, exchanges via messaging, publications on social networks and the content we share, comment on or like there. are volumes of information that we willingly share with tech giants and that ultimately reveal much more about us than random phone conversations.
This applies without the exchange between platforms. Social networks can thus acquire information from external sources without our knowledge, allowing us to know our marital status, whether we have already been involved in a legal dispute, or even information collected thanks to loyalty programs in stores.
In 2018, researchers tested more than 17,000 apps on Android and found that some took screenshots or videos of user actions and sent them to third parties… Ironically, these researchers instead wanted to test whether the apps were recording the conversations (they found). nothing like that).
The technologies used by Facebook for targeted advertising could also be described as invasive. Thanks to Meta Pixel (formerly Facebook Pixel), the social network tracks the activity of its users across millions of websites in order to tailor its advertising (for example, recognizing that we stay on certain pages, that we make a purchase, etc.). ).